Clancy’s Fish Bar sits on the beachfront at City Beach in Perth. Its beach bar is one of the highest traffic parts of the venue, and it is the part where a menu has to work hardest. Amped Digital replaced the printed signage there with a digital menu board.
What made the project different is who designed it. Clancy’s had their own designer, and their brand ambassador had firm views on how the board should look, so we put our design team alongside theirs rather than handing over a template.
Challenges
A beachfront menu has to be readable before it can be anything else.
The beach bar carries heavy foot traffic straight off the sand, so the menu needed to be visible, clear and identifiable to people passing through rather than studying it.
Printed signage was making the day to day harder. Running out of a menu item, or changing something mid-service, meant working around a board that could not change.
“If we ran out of a menu item, or if we had to change something on the hop, it was pretty difficult.”
Reprinting carried its own cost, which is the reason most venues leave a printed board alone longer than they should.
The harder constraint was the design itself. Clancy’s brand ambassador was, in their own words, “very picky about design factors” and “quite set in my ways”. Clancy’s also had a designer of their own. A supplier who arrives with a fixed house style has nowhere to go in that conversation.
Our Solution
We delivered a digital menu board for the beach bar, designed collaboratively rather than delivered finished.
Two design teams, one result
The part of this project the client singled out was not the hardware. It was the working relationship between the two design teams.
Our content design team worked directly with Clancy’s designer, so the board came out looking the way Clancy’s wanted it to look rather than the way we would have built it unprompted.
That matters more in hospitality than in most sectors. A venue’s signage is part of its brand, and an operator with a clear visual identity is right to be protective of it.
“Everyone’s got a different idea of how they like these things to look, and I was very clear on mine, and they worked with me to get that result.”
A menu the venue can change itself
The board runs as a digital menu board, so changes happen on screen instead of at a printer.
Taking an item off, adjusting a price or updating the board mid-service is now an edit. There is no reprint, no lead time, and no cost attached to keeping the menu accurate.
“This is a really quick edit, easy way to stay on top of that, without having to spend lots of money on reprinting menu boards.”
The Result
Clancy’s beach bar runs a menu it can update as fast as the venue changes.
The board is legible in a high-traffic beachfront setting, which was the brief. The design reflects Clancy’s own visual direction, because their designer was in the room for it. And the operational problem that started the project, being stuck with a printed board mid-service, is gone.
Running a venue where the menu changes often?
We deliver digital signage in Perth and nationally, for restaurants, bars and hospitality venues. Alongside menu boards we handle outdoor digital signage for exposed and alfresco areas, advertising screens for promotions, and training and support so your team can run the screens themselves.
You can see other Perth food and beverage fitouts at Mt Pleasant Fish & Chips and Batter Up.
Request a quote and we will look at the space and the menu before recommending anything.